Vern Schafer joined the family business of moving pianos as a teenager, but had the dream of running his own piano store. While still running the Schafer Piano Movers Company, Vern set ou...
Eric Schoenberg opened his own guitar shop in Tiburon, California after working music retail on the east coast for decades. Over the years he watched the vintage guitar market grow and de...
Eric Schwartz is the Chairman of Sherman Clay, the historic chain of piano stores. The stores are located in the northern half of California and have played a big role in the growth of th...
Cheryl Seppala has given the gift of music to countless students in her organ store over her career. She has never lost that spark in her eye that has encouraged her students to stay with...
Wayne Seppala was playing organ for shoppers at the Montgomery Wards in San Diego before he was a teenager. When the store stopped selling organs, he landed a job at Ozzie’s Music where h...
Maryann Sfarzo has always loved singing! She is fondly remembered in the Baldwin NAMM booth alongside Lowell Simpson as Mr. & Mrs. Baldwin. The two entertained attendees with songs as...
Billy Shaw and his wife Donna opened Desert Piano in Palm Springs after working in a series of piano sales jobs, including one at Colton Piano where the couple met. Billy is well known in...
Tim Shirk likes to say he is a Tim at Tim’s Music and not the Tim. While not the founder, Tim is the general manager of the Sacramento area store, which focuses on band and orchestra sale...
Michael Simmons is a co-founder of the Fretboard Journal and the author of several articles and books about vintage guitars and other fretted instruments. He began his career at Gryphon G...
Paula Simmons wanted to create a shop where good quality instruments could be accessible to all those who came in the store. As a teacher, Paula was very interested in providing lessons ...
Cindy Singer met her future husband, Danny, when they were young kids. They began dating in their late teens and were married soon after. Inspired by their love of dancing and music, they...
Evan Skopp is the president of Inside Track International, which is a boutique sales & marketing firm that works with luthiers and guitar manufacturers. He started out in music at an ...
Allan Small played music as a young student and earned his degree in music education, then became a band director for almost a decade. As a band director in Pennsylvania he was involved ...
Kenny Smith serves as the Managing Director of the Peavey Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard. However, this is only part of what he does in the shop. Kenny is a born salesman and enjoys...
Steve Soest played in several local rock bands and studied hard on the makes of electric guitars and amps, an expertise that came in handy around 1972 when he began repairing musical inst...
David St John began his career in music retail in 1967 and since that time he has devoted his career to bringing music and music lessons to the lives of his customers. David worked for a...
Lloyd Stark began his career in the music industry as a teacher in a small string shop in Berkeley, California, providing lessons on bluegrass instruments such as the guitar and banjo. Wi...
Marcia Stearns is a regular attendee at the annual RPMDA conventions and can often be found volunteering to introduce a speaker or tallying the session surveys. Her passion for the busin...
Tom Steuckert is a veteran of the music industry having served as store manager at Union Grove Music in Santa Cruz, a road rep and sales manager. His career began when he helped assemble...
Gary Sunda began building guitar amplifiers under the name Sunda in the 1960s before he was hired by Don Randall to create a new line of amplifiers, Randall Amps. Gary began designing pr...
Pete Surowski is the founder of Pete’s Music store in Anaheim, California. He often uses the tag line that his store is the closest music retailer to the Winter NAMM Show. While perform...
Robert Tall is among the most successful and popular organ salesmen in the music industry –historically and presently. He earned his masters and doctorate in music performance and began w...
Bob Taylor enrolled in wood shop while a student in high school and made a guitar for his final grade. The idea of making his own guitars came easy to Bob and he set out to create his own...
Joe Teixeira opened a small music store in San Jose, California in 1964. As the fiftieth anniversary approached in 2013, Joe sat down for his NAMM Oral History interview to begin documen...
Larry Thomas is the current CEO of Fender Musical Instrument Company. He also served as CEO of Guitar Center during the company’s early growth period. He worked closely with music educat...
Johnny Thompson had the distinction of being the very first music student of a young steel guitar player named Ernie ball. Back in the early 1950s, before he established a string company,...
DeForest Thornburgh came into the industry with a strong business background and a deep-seated passion for guitars. When an opportunity arose to purchase the well-established Blue Guitar...
Jerry Tishkoff and his brother Eddie owned the famous Hollywood Piano Company and Hollywood Piano Rental Company located in Southern California. The stores gained fame for providing instr...
Eddie Tishkoff and his brother Jerry owned the famous Hollywood Piano Company and Hollywood Piano Rental Company located in Southern California, one of the busiest piano rental outfits in...
Daniel Tomlinson was giving drum lessons when he was 13 years old and grew up in his family’s music store, California Keyboards in Bakersfield, California. In addition, as a teenager, Dan...
Glenn Treibitz purchased Hollywood Piano from the original owners which was established in 1928. As the “go to” piano store for movies and television, Hollywood Piano has provided pianos ...
Russ Turner opened his own organ repair company in the early 1960s in the early days of the home organ boom. He worked with all of the organ dealers in and around the San Francisco Bay Ar...
